The Ronco Principle

by _pius • 12 years ago

311 242 12 years ago

lpolovets2• 12 years ago

I've heard YC has an internal VC review database (somewhat alluded to in the 2nd footnote). I'm curious, has any consideration been given to making it public or semi-public? Or at least to publish a list of "The X best-rated VCs/seed funds/angels" every once in a while to gamify better behavior?

robg4• 12 years ago

Exactly my thought. The scatterplot he mentions in Footnote 1 seems uniquely in their wheelhouse.

shillster• 12 years ago

It is in their wheelhouse, but this information is probably deemed to be part of the "secret sauce" which would be hard for any "information economy" company to part with.

pavpanchekha• 12 years ago

This felt similar to me to the academic world. I'm a lowly graduate student, but one thing I've been consistency surprised by is the way the most senior people in the field are often the nicest. Sure—there are assholes everywhere. But when you hear horror stories of a professor mistreating their advisees or writing horrid reviews or submitting trash papers, they are often the junior folk. Partly because this behavior doesn't pass muster in the community, and so people who act this way don't get tenure; partly because senior professors have tenure and thus less to lose by acting nice; and partly because, just as I think in the startup world, being nice actually carries large benefits. In fact, I might argue that recognizing the benefits of niceness—valuing future rewards, trusting other persons—requires intelligence, so that maybe nicer people are in fact more intelligent as well.

But maybe that is Berkson's paradox: I'm more likely to hear about mean or successful researchers, so they appear anti-correlated even if they are in truth independent.

robg4• 12 years ago

Having dealt with a wide range of great to a-hole scientists, I think you're subtly onto something here.

Great scientists propagate through having a strong lineage. They effectively train, nurture, and then spin out more great scientists. The a-holes drive their progeny away from science. They effectively kill their own future. The great scientists end up promoting and extending their work through their academic children and grandchildren. I've seen both patterns up close and personally.

The big difference with investors is where academic progeny are closely related, usually in one field, investors are challenged by investing in closely aligned companies, given the many conflicts of interest. That's not to say an investor can't have a sector bias. But even companies close to one another are unlikely to benefit from each other.

lifeisstillgood2• 12 years ago

Quote from Prof. Donald Sadoway

"The point of University professors is to take graduate students and create new professors."

Great barn storming Ted performance, highly recommend just taking 15 mins or so for it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_...

calcsam• 12 years ago

This is a general principle; the meanest people are, as pg once put it, "the nervous middle classes" on a status hierarchy:

"Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks."

"If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes."

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

threatofrain• 12 years ago

In this case, though, I would object to this idea of bullying being a bad strategy. I think the general consensus of literature on adolescent bullying in US and US-like countries, including some not, like Japan and China, is that bullies are among the most popular people in the school context.

There are also studies showing that bullies experience protective effects against some psychological issues, such as social anxiety and loneliness.

Also, both bystanders rate bullies as the most popular people, and they also list them as the most desirable people (victims do too, which is very unintuitive).

Also very interesting: bullying behaves like a social position, with people moving in and out as bully one year, but not the next, whereas victimhood is more stable, like an identity, and may persist from school to school and to online social contexts.

Here's what I'd like to know. Since I haven't read a shred of literature on adult workplace bullying, I'm curious to see if bystanders still behave the same way. Because if they do, that means backstabbing, mudslinging, and office politicking are still vibrant strategies, because it's bystanders who bring the rewards of bullying. The people emote to the tyrant emperor their whims regarding an office gladiator.

Fede_V• 12 years ago

It has to do with confidence. The nicest scientists are often very old, without anything to prove, and genuinely passionate about their subject.

Hotshots that are mid career have a bimodal distribution - there's some incredibly nice ones, and there are some sharks that enjoy pushing their students to the brink of exhaustion to crank out another paper so they can feel bigger than the person with the office next door.

The meanest people tend to be mean not out of malice or spite, but out of insecurity and a constant need to prove themselves.

yvsong• 12 years ago

If Napoleon was good at judging people, they are driven by 2 things only: greed and fear. The most successful people career wise have to be greed-driven, confident, and mentally strong. The meanest ones are typically fear-driven, insecure and mentally weak. My life lesson is to stay away from those driven too much by fear, who are usually losers in Darwin's game in the long term.

chollida1• 12 years ago

This seems to be the follow up to http://paulgraham.com/mean.html where pg refines his argument.

I'm glad he did, I felt that his "Mean people fail" essay to be one of his weaker essays, and judging by the comments it got when it was released so did pretty much everyone else on hacker news:)

I tend to agree with him that good people get further along in life. In my industry, finance, I tend to see that the good people do much better than the assholes, contrary to what hollywood would have you believe:)

I think the reason for this is similar to what pg pointed out, finance is a very information and relationship driven business, the better caliber of friendship you cultivate the more people there are who will give you the first call, or preferential treatment on new issues.

abstractbill• 12 years ago

My gut feeling is that personalities are not fixed, and there are feedback cycles in action here. For example, I find it believable that the more successful a person becomes, the less likely they are to feel a bunch of emotions that might cause them to behave unkindly (e.g. desperation, jealousy, and so on).

russnewcomer• 12 years ago

I wonder if pg's view of top investors as 'good' or, maybe more accurately, consistently moral has changed since he has gotten to know more of them personally? Not a charge of corruption or cronyism, but sometimes one has different standards for friends than for people one doesn't know.

dsrguru• 12 years ago

Conversely, one might not realize that "famous investor X" is actually a really awesome, caring human until getting to know them in person.

robg4• 12 years ago

[1] I'm not saying that if you sort investors by benevolence you've also sorted them by returns, but rather that if you do a scatterplot with benevolence on the x axis and returns on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

[2] Y Combinator in particular, because it aggregates data from so many startups, has a pretty comprehensive view of investor behavior.

Why can't YC, of all firms, publish this scatterplot? Wouldn't it hold people accountable in a way that nothing else would?

philwelch3• 12 years ago

First, because there's no objective measure of benevolence, and second, because ranking VC's on a spectrum of benevolence vs. malevolence would strain the relationship between YC and these VC firms. You get a lot more traction making general statements like pg does here than you do by calling out individual firms.

robg4• 12 years ago

Asking YC companies to crowdsource benevolence is hardly earth shattering. I'd be surprised if they don't already. The difference is offering this guide as a public resource. The risk is that firms could still treat YC companies well then treat others less well, but as pg notes, this type of duplicity is hardly worth the trouble.

arjie• 12 years ago

What exactly would be the point? No two people would agree on the measure of benevolence.

debacle• 12 years ago

Even if they anonymized the subjects you'd be able to reverse engineer the outliers.

Semiapies3• 12 years ago

Because it would be just as handwaved as the article.

api• 12 years ago

My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is "pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent."

I don't have enough experience to tell you which side is higher than the other, though the fact that we do not live in some kind of absolute hellhole suggests that the curve is tipped toward the right (benevolence). Yet I do get the impression that it's one extreme or another.

The sociopaths do tend to burn themselves out eventually though. There seems to be some kind of what's effectively karma, which probably comes from peoples' lies eventually catching up with them. It's overall better to be benevolent.

hyp02• 12 years ago

In the big picture, mutually beneficial cooperation works. That's what civilization is, and why we still have it. What we consider sociopathic is often highly cooperative, in an absolute sense. It's just that our standards have risen so high that that basic level of cooperativeness isn't enough.

Illustrative example: hooligans riding loud motorbikes stopping at red lights.

philwelch3• 12 years ago

Hooligans riding loud motorbikes are at least riding together, too. Most problems don't come from sociopaths because individual sociopaths can only do the work of one person, and are only motivated by their own personal gain. Most problems come from groups of people working together and against an outgroup, either for their perceived collective benefit or for some ideological or religious cause.

mfringel• 12 years ago

I think that's mostly true, although there's also the case of the pathological sociopath that after making their pile of money, decides to whitewash their legacy through philanthropy, in order to appear to jump over to the other side of the U.

rudolf0• 12 years ago

Armchair psychiatry is unwise. It's very possible for someone to be extremely ruthless in business while still being a genuinely empathetic and kind person in general. Not all sociopath-seeming executives are actual sociopaths.

darkmighty2• 12 years ago

That's a questionable point, whether it is ethically right to be an "asshole" through your career and then donate it all once it ends.

I would say it (up to a point) is right. Donating/helping early in your life has a low impact, so the main reason I think it's reasonable to argue that way is that not everyone will donate at the end of their lives. So by gaining leverage early on (not contributing to philanthropy, not helping, etc) you will compensate for those who wouldn't donate and help make the world a better place once they got rich.

If you look a the billionaires out there quite a few will sit on their growing pile of cash until they die.

bryanlarsen• 12 years ago

If PG is right, then sociopath's will be fairly indistinguishable from nice people.

True sociopath's don't care about your feelings, either positively or negatively, they just care about advancing their own agenda.

If the best way to advance their own agenda is by being nice to people, then that's what they'll do. That's what vegabook got mercilessly downvoted for saying.

And as PG said, lies are really expensive, so smart sociopaths won't use them.

So maybe Ron Conway is a sociopath. But who cares why he's doing so much good? What matters are the results, not the inner reasons.

ema2• 12 years ago

While sociopaths can plan ruthlessly they're not necessarily more longterm oriented than non-sociopaths (since they bore more easily I would even expect them to tend to be less longterm oriented). So I consider it highly unlikely that a sociopath would play nice to everyone for years and years.

TheOtherHobbes• 12 years ago

I'd like to see more nuance to the argument.

What does 'nice' actually mean? It's famous for being a low-entropy word.

In fact not everyone agrees that Conway is 'nice', or that everything he does and says is good:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-an...

Or even:

http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/12/09/ron-conway-twee...

So it matters whether or not Conway or anyone is a sociopath, because IMO the only useful definition of 'nice' is an inclusive one. The more inclusive, the better.

Being a charming marketer while benefiting yourself, your network, and primarily yourself and your network, doesn't make you nice, it makes you an exemplary professional.

There is a difference, and it's not a trivial one.

larrys• 12 years ago

"My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is "pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent.""

Time also changes people for better in many cases.

Want to add that something that I have noticed is that people may start out one way (assholes or very self centered) and then move toward "extremely benevolent" when money, fame or power is already "in the bag" and as they age. At that point they will become more generous and it's quite possible that people that they didn't treat nice are no longer around or visible to tell the story. Not taking a jab at Ronco here but do we really know what he was like in his 20's on the way up? (It's only a question for discussion so everyone keep calm..)

I can think of at least one person in the valley who is very well respected now and more or less a father figure that was viewed as quite the asshole back in the 90's when he actually was still working hard to make his mark on the world. (This isn't the only example actually the others were more or less meat and potatoes business people who wouldn't give anyone the time of day if there wasn't any benefit to them).

dinkumthinkum6• 12 years ago

You may not care but that curve you are talking about is called a bimodal distribution. Just writing for information not pedantry. :)

qeorge5• 12 years ago

This reminds me of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing[1], in a funny way (bear with me).

In pricing, if you have features in common with other vendors then those features are commodities and basically valueless. But the features you have that no one else has - those make you priceless.

For example, S3's uptime record makes it a different product than e.g., DreamObjects, even though they are API compatible.

Similarly, while VCs are all providing the ultimate commodity product (dumb money), its the features which no one else has that make investors like Ron Conway priceless. There's plenty of other VCs, but they are not substitute products for Ronco.

Finally, the way to find these unique, priceless features is to look for extremes:

    - Cloud hosting with not just 99.99% uptime, but 100% uptime
    - Email inboxes with not just a lot of storage, but *unlimited* storage
    - Photos developed not just faster, but *instantly*
    - A VC with not just a great track record of doing the right thing, but a *perfect* record

And as a consumer, these are the companies you want to do business with: the Rackspaces, the Ron Conways, and the Stripes of this world.

[1] If you read one business book this year, make it The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing. If you don't think a book on pricing can change your life, you haven't read this book. Protip: get an older edition and save a ton of dough.

ComNik2• 12 years ago

Old like 1994 old? Thanks for the recommendation.

qeorge5• 12 years ago

I have the 4th edition (2005 update), which is only $8 used on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Tactics-Pricing-Growing-Profi...

But honestly any edition is great - its sold as a textbook[1], so they seem to make periodic, cursory updates, but the substance remains unchanged. I suspect the 1994 edition is fantastic as well, and perhaps available in your local library.

I hope you like it, and get as much out of it as I have! And thank you for taking my recommendation, that made my day. :)

[1] That its a textbook is perhaps my favorite meta-lesson of the book itself. How do you charge $100 for a book? Call it a text book!

Alex39172• 12 years ago

For what it's worth, Seth Godin's book All Marketers Are Liars also covers the material in your specific example. It probably doesn't cover most of what's in the rest of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, though imho the idea of 'going to the extremes' is so important that it's really worth reading an entire book just on that idea.

qeorge5• 12 years ago

That's a great book too - I like Seth's writing style. I believe he calls this "finding a edge".

TSATOP is different because teaches you to actually quantify the value delivered to the customers. i.e., how much, in real dollars, is 100% uptime going to save us over 99.99%?

It seems like a small difference, but its not: 100% uptime unlocks new business models that don't work with "only" 99.99% uptime (e.g., banking software or API companies). That's what TSATOP really explains - how to quantify the seemingly minute differences in your offering, and how to communicate that value to the customer so that you can charge accordingly.

To use an example actually from the book, how much money will a DNA testing kit that requires 10% less sample material be worth to a customer?

Well, first that depends on who the customer is - its a lot more valuable to a pharma company than a university, for example. But how much more? The book would do something like calculate the number of new drugs the pharma company can release each year based on having this better DNA testing kit, and calculate how that affects the customer's bottom line. Eventually this would result in something like: every time you use our product instead of our closest competitor, it puts $50 in your pocket.

Seth Godin's writing is awesome for motivation and to get your brain moving, but this book really drills down on the nuts and bolts of pricing, and provides templates and worksheets for performing your own Economic Value Estimation of your product. Both are really useful, but this one is more like a textbook, whereas Seth's is more like a (very) motivational speech.

brianbreslin• 12 years ago

Qeorge, I also recommend Principles of Pricing by Vohra. I'm taking his class right now at Kellogg, fascinating stuff.

http://smile.amazon.com/Principles-Pricing-Analytical-Rakesh...

qeorge5• 12 years ago

Thank you so much Brian! I'll start reading it right away.

The class sounds great as well, and I hope you enjoy it. If you find yourself compelled to share anything in particular, I'd be very interested to hear it. Maybe you could do a blog post?

dudurocha• 12 years ago

Thanks for the book. Just bought the kindle version!

thomyorkie• 12 years ago

It seems there are two books with the same title but different subtitles. Are you referring to "A Guide to Growing More Profitably" or " A Guide to Profitable Decision Making"?

nsxwolf• 12 years ago

I thought this was going to be about Ronco, as in Ron Popeil's infomercial products company.

stevesearer• 12 years ago

I definitely thought pg had written about the slogan, "Just Set It and Forget It" before clicking through to the post.

cpb• 12 years ago

Reminds me of The Evolution of Cooperation, sounds like Ron is a nice strategy with a solid retaliation response... How is he with forgiveness?

vegabook• 12 years ago

Yes Mr Graham, many people are just "nice". It is weird that you sound so surprised. Perhaps it would be worth moving out of the money circles. Unfortunately, in my experience there is a correlation between those who are genuinely nice, and the people who are wealthy. Afraid to say, the correlation is negative. Ronco must be very nice indeed.

If you can't tell who to be nice to, you have to be nice to everyone. And probably the only people who can manage that are the people who are genuinely good.

No, being nice to everyone is not being nice. It's being a liar. Nobody likes everyone (though there are many kind souls - few in positions of power - who try hard). The only people who are (superficially) nice to everyone are the ones who are in it for themselves. And that's not nice.

programminggeek• 12 years ago

I was really hoping this was about Ronco, Ron Popeli, or something related to that business. It's too bad because Ronco is an interesting business story in its own right.

brianlash• 12 years ago

Anyone interested in reading more on this topic should check out Adam Grant's Give and Take.

Incidentally, one of the interesting takeaways from the book is that if you look at plot of people mapped to career success, you'll find that benevolent givers dominate -both- ends of the distribution. The theory goes that those who are in the left tail got there by being too preoccupied with others' needs, to the exclusion of their own success. Conversely those in the right tail got to where they are both by helping others and by consistently asking others to help them. In the latter scenario these folks have harnessed benevolence as a strategy for career growth, and the collective goodwill "out there in the ether" nets out to measurable success over the long-run.

mrschwabe2• 12 years ago

Excellent summary and thank-you for the book recommendation.

The first chapter is conveniently available as a free PDF from the book's site.

It seems like something for those people who are grinding away, doing good work at a great value for their investor/employer/client/customer, but remain underpaid and undervalued; a sort of self-defeating benevolence.

zoba• 12 years ago

I think the Beatles had this principle down when they sang "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." Clearly, they had to make it fit a lyric, but I think the idea is very similar.

Sometimes when I hear stories of mean people getting ahead I wonder how accurate the sentiment could be. Its good to see a case where doing good over time results in success.

dropit_sphere• 12 years ago

Terrifying thought: what if the causality goes the other way? What if all the bad are bad because "that's just the way the business works" and "hard choices"?

cfontes7• 12 years ago

Well that is an interesting point of view.

My experience so far( early 30's) has been exactly the opposite, most people/bosses I've meet that were successful in business were complete assholes, with several nice people working for them exclusively for the money.

That has in fact made part of my life very miserable because I really don't expect anything from anybody anymore. If been tricked/robbed/scammed so many times by people I trusted that my trust is mostly gone for now, and I only expect bad things from people when I depend on them for something. (If something good happens it's awesome, but I don't count on it)

Maybe I trust people more than I should have done, maybe it's the place I live... I don't know.

gatsby• 12 years ago

That's really unfortunate. Sorry to hear that.

Out of curiosity - where do you live, and what industry are you in?

cfontes7• 12 years ago

1. Brazil 2. IT

davemel3710• 12 years ago

Don't take this the wrong way, but if everyone you are encountering is screwing you...you have some hard questions to ask yourself.

My experience has been that when someone "only expects bad things from people when they depnd on them" it means one of 3 things.

1. They have a hard time accepting responsibility and taking ownership of their own problems.

2. They are running with a really bad crowd, and need to go to the library to make some new friends.

3. They project an image that lets people walk all over them.

Everyone has problems that come up in their life, but if you haven't experienced nice people as being the norm... there is a better that 66% chance its something YOU ALONE CAN AND MUST CHANGE.

rsp19842• 12 years ago

I have a problem with your point 3. With all respect but I think I heard that argument before in the context of women being sexually assaulted and the way they dress being to blame...

acomms• 12 years ago

This is actually really great advice - albeit a bit harsh. #2 makes sense, but any advice on solving #1 and #3? Is this yours or did you read about this somewhere?

Lawtonfogle• 12 years ago

Shouldn't any group of people who will walk over you just because you project some image be considered a bad crowd?

If someone is running with a bad crowd, then (as you point out) #2 is the problem. If they aren't, then #3 shouldn't be a concern anyways.

cfontes7• 12 years ago

Not taken, but don't get me wrong. I don't mean friends/family/coworkers. I've got plenty of those that I can and have trusted.

I mean Bosses and people that I've done business with on a you pay me level. In those cases there was almost nothing I could do besides filling a lawsuit and spending large amounts of money, time and sanity. I settled with the understanding that they had the upper hand and I was a fool for trusting my money/time to them.

One case:

Owner "Shit you are leaving??? Who is going to do XXX? Can't you stay at least until xxx so we can deliver xxx and save our asses? That is our only client right now."

Me "Hum... I really need to start next week, but I will do my best"

I stayed for one month more that I needed in contract, my new employer was pissed but agreed with it. In the end the Owner didn't pay me my leave that was due and was agreed to be paid and delayed the pay of that last month for 15 days. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit to get that last month payment.

For me that is about people being scumbags.

But valid points nonetheless.

learnstats2• 12 years ago

I worked in an industry which was tightly squeezed by government regulation. Every business I know which was run honestly and reputably had to close.

Those that remain are exclusively run by people who are willing to break any rules and any laws as it suits them and are intelligent enough to do so when they can get away with it. I feel very jaded by this experience. Is this what people really mean when they talk about 'hustle'? Is it not possible for an honest person to run a business?

In another context you would call these people sociopaths. They are happy to screw employees - and the conditions are currently just right for them to do that.

Good people who have skills or personal interest in that industry now have to work for that kind of person. They have no realistic choice.

You alone can and must change - we can agree - but your three options are not true to life.

crpatino• 12 years ago

What about?

4. You've been burned badly/recently enough by your interactions with a minority of jerks, and your perception is biased.

tdees40• 12 years ago

I work in finance, and the process by which senior executives are selected literally screens to ensure assholery. It's like a job requirement.

orionblastar5• 12 years ago

Like Ebeneezer Scrooge? Low on humanity and cheer, high in greed and making people work extra hours for no extra pay?

drzaiusapelord2• 12 years ago

I suspect, as someone early in his career, what you interpret as "asshole," pg interprets as niceness. From pg's perspective, those whip-cracking middle managers are getting the productivity they need to make his or Ron's investments increase in value. You're on the receiving end of some harshness, but the money-men don't care. Why should they?

Its amusing when we play the moralism card in business. I'm fairly personable and I'm sure would be considered nice, but if tomorrow I opened the worst sweatshop in Vietnam and turned $10,000 into $1m I would be praised. pg or my investors wouldn't care about the social issues of the young people working in my sweatshop, or if they cared, it wouldn't be enough to deem me a villain. They get to meet a fairly nice guy who can turn a little money into a lot. I'd brand myself a fashion entrepreneur, write some pretentious blog postings careful to never address labor concerns, and be done with it. The nitty gritty isn't on a level where investors and other money-men care about. They care about my workers as much as they care about the electrons in my CPU that powers my website. Its works, right? It makes money? Fine. You're "nice." No, I am absolutely not. I own an abusive sweatshop.

This is one of the problems of judging people by their forward facing personality. Its easy to be personable and charismatic when you have money or social capital. I have people below me who have to be mean. I don't need to be. The same way Putin kisses babies and tells jokes on TV while his troops murder civilians and annex land in Ukraine with impunity.

There's a meta narrative here that's concerning as well. Programmers tend to be INTJ males. We have bad social skills and are often naïve. What does this say about charisma and those who can use it effectively? Are we easy to game? I think so. pg's essays are usually top notch except when they're about soft social skills. These last two are questionable, at least to me. I feel the niceness question is a bit more complex than pg suggests, and often it fits not only into a hard game-theory framework but also a soft social skill framework that encompasses everything from salesmanship to how we talk to power or act when we are the ones with power.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

A thousand times that.

And we are being conditioned to think of niceness in the personal level, and even worse judge with superficial BS like nice clothes, clean appereance, etc.

A well behaved rich person will immediately strike as "nicer" (with the meaning of "good" too) than a poor guy on the street or a homeless person, even if the latter has a heart of gold and the first is a huge negative for society. If the rich person is also famous, it's as if people lose their mind to its "aura".

This is probably because as a species we were "evolved" to look for immediate personal threat (attack etc), which looks more probable with a homeless person than with a well dressed oil baron or ruthless businessman. But the glitch is that we use that to also judge for "goodness" and morality.

michaelkeenan• 12 years ago

pg or my investors wouldn't care about the social issues of the young people working in my sweatshop

I think it's rude to accuse people of hypothetical malfeasance. If there's evidence that someone is callous, show us the evidence. If you think you know of scenarios in which they would be callous, then just tell us what evidence led you to that conclusion instead.

cfontes7• 12 years ago

Well those doesn't look like most of my cases.

Mine was more like: Owner "Shit you are leaving??? Can't you stay at least until xxx so we can deliver xxx and save our asses?"

Me "Hum... I really need to start next week, but I will do my best"

I stayed for one month more that I needed in contract, my new employer was pissed of but agreed with it. In the end the Owner didn't pay me my leave that was due and was agreed to be paid and delayed the pay of that month for 15 days. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit to get that last month payment.

I've had harsh managers and 2 of them are my friends now. That is nothing related to that is about being a scumbag.

guelo3• 12 years ago

pg's theory is that transparency and unpredictability is what is supposedly making nice investors successful in startup-land. Maybe your industry is not sufficiently transparent or unpredictable to help the nice people rise to the top.

noobermin• 12 years ago

So, I'm trying to see whether this applies to us in academia, whether the "nice-but-no-push-over" types are more successful than the sociopaths. Unfortunately, I can't think of one either in real life or from anecdotes shared with me.

I think it's different when the system isn't run on money, but pride.

EDIT: Actually, I am able to think of one. It is of worth to note that he is pretty clever and a natural born talent and was a child prodigy.

justizin• 12 years ago

"Good does not mean being a pushover. I would not want to face an angry Ronco. But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. Ron is so old school he's Old Testament. He will smite you in his just wrath, but there's no malice in it."

... like when smiting everyone who doesn't work in Tech or agree with him in SF by subverting democracy?

This is an example of where PG has a bias and we part ways.

Keep writing essays about software, and I promise I'll try to learn LISP, PG! ;)

mrschwabe2• 12 years ago

This Ronco Principal, as Paul describes it, reminds me of a vision for a world in whereby the contract of a business deal is second to the word of your partners & colleagues. Where honor, trust and values trump contracts, laws and lawyers.

Why? Not only is this hypothetical business world a more natural and less expensive place to do business, but another advantage is that un-invited third parties can't easily interfere with your deals.

Some might say that defining terms on paper creates a record that can be used against you.

Shaking hands and trusting in your partners that they will follow through on their word - that type of deal is more difficult for the state to compromise, exploit, or create laws against.

orionblastar5• 12 years ago

Let me just state that like people with autism I have a mental illness that affects the social part of my brain. It makes it hard to make friends as I lack people and social skills. It gave me an advantage to make me high functioning enough to learn programming at a young age and work with math and science better than average.

I am not a mean person, when people get to know me I am nice. But I have few friends because I lack social and people skills. I cannot seem to emotionally connect with people and what friends I have are also with a high IQ that I connect to intellectually.

When I worked, I worked with some mean people. They found high functioning coworkers of mine and pretended to be their friend and then stabbed them in the back and forced them to quit because they were competition. They took credit for their work and then decided to target me next. Calling me a nerd and geek, making fun of me, bullying and harassing me even with threats of violence trying to force me to quit. I ended up stressed out and developed a mental illness and was forced on disability.

Based on Linkedin those mean people who did all of that still have their jobs. They have social skills and people skills and use it to manipulate people, and then black-stab them and climb the corporate ladder of success. Until they make it to management where they can bully and harass people to do their jobs. All the while keeping their dark side hidden.

If you ever worked for Steve Jobs, you would say he was a jerk, he was abusive to his engineers to get things done just right. He had anger problems too. But he had the social skills and people skills to be well liked. There are a lot of people like Steve Jobs out there.

I'll most likely never work again due to my mental illness, but I am not a mean person, I don't treat people with disrespect, I don't bully and harass them. But due to lacking people and social skills, I'll never have enough friends to become a success.

puredemo• 12 years ago

Sorry about your illness, but I don't understand why it would keep you from ever working again?

orionblastar5• 12 years ago

After 911 there is a medical background check, once a company learns I am mentally ill I get the rejection letter that says "overqualified" that rejects me.

I had a hard time trying to find work, with a history of being mentally ill on the records and my background. Most people hide it and don't see a doctor and go undiganosed because of the social stigmas of being mentally ill.

I happen to suffer from schizoaffective disorder which is rare less than .05% of the population has it. It is like bipolar and schizophrenia combined.

When I did have a job as soon as they learned I was mentally ill from my communications, I was bullied, harassed, and picked on, and then eventually fired when I had a panic attack from the stress.

I am sure if I found the right company that wouldn't treat me that way or understand mentally ill people and don't let their employees pick on, bully, and harass them.

I used to earn $150K/year as a programmer, but now they say that is too much money to trust to a mentally ill person. In all honesty it was never about the money, I just loved programming and happened to become good at it in Visual BASIC and Active Server Pages, which are 13+ years out of date now. But I still try to keep up and learn.

My wife doesn't want me to relocate, or else I've have worked for Google in 1999, and I might have avoided the stresses I had that made me mentally ill in 2001. So I am sort of stuck in St. Louis MO and what companies there are here to work that don't like mentally ill people working for them. We tend to drive up health care costs for their insurance and when they think of disabled people they think of people in wheelchairs not the mentally ill. They tried to justify firing be by having a software contractor work $100/hr to do my job while I was in a hospital claiming that none of my coworkers could operate at my level of work. This fits the undue hardship clause of the employment law.

I had about three employers do that to me in a row, and my doctor put me on disability because I couldn't get a stable job.

I was usually hired to debug software to get a company to the next level. I optimized ADO recordsets, SQL Server tables and stored procedures, optimized Crystal Reports reports, and fixed broken Visual BASIC code so it wouldn't crash the machine and it runs faster. I also did web development in Active Server Pages using VBScript and HTML and CSS and JavaScript.

But like I said, no company wants to hire me now, and if they did it would only be temporary to use me to get to the next level and then fire me after I got them there. I feel like a third stage rocket booster.

claypoolb• 12 years ago

It is no coincidence Ronco is the most coveted Angel in the Valley - he epitomizes integrity. This value is the most desired aspect an entrepreneur will strive for in finding early stage investors. We, especially in the early stages of building our company, need people who will do the right thing.

I remember one example of Ranco's unyielding integrity: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/24/angelgate-ron-conway-...

ProAm• 12 years ago

"there is a clear trend among them: the most successful investors are also the most upstanding."

This is also true in many aspects in life. Good people are rewarded, not always, but more often than not deserving people are successful and happy.

lifeisstillgood2• 12 years ago

The problem with this as a strategy, and problem is a strong word, is that it is insanely hard to replicate.

I can happily not steal money or diamonds all day long, I can always not persuade a founder to sell me his stock for pennies because deep down being dishonest is not how Mrs Brian raised her children.

But not dishonest is different from good. Good is active - not bad is passive. I know people who have righteous anger on their side - they actually find dishonesty offensive, something in need of fixing. Conway sounds like that - someone who goes past not being bad and over to trying to fix a world gone wrong.

Good is a hard balance - you need to know right from wrong, and believe that if you confront wrong, the world has your back.

Scary

Like I said, hard strategy to follow.

mathattack• 12 years ago

I view this in the light of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

In a one player game, it pays to be nasty. It only pays to be nice in an ongoing game.

Ron Conway seems to have been playing the ongoing game long before increased transparency made it fashionable, and has reaped the benefits of it. I have never met him, but he seems to be the one guy people universally acclaim for support, integrity and doing the right things. It's easy to see why he's Call #1 for folks seeking an angel, and he's the call who entrepreneurs take.

gcv• 12 years ago

But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong.

An example of Ron Conway being angry at someone (video at the bottom of the article): http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-an...

Disclaimer: I don't know enough about the personalities, politics, finances, or economics involved to have a substantive opinion on the matter under discussion.

malchow• 12 years ago

Love this. Viva Ron Conway!

air• 12 years ago

"And yet he's a super nice guy. In fact, nice is not the word. Ronco is good."

So good he supports torture http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/12/09/ron-conway-bla...

dvt6• 12 years ago

If you're really trying to say that torture is 'bad' (and not illegal -- which it sort-of is), you need to really flex some intellectual muscle and not merely just claim it.

It's a been a pretty hotly-debated issue in (politico-)philosophical circles for the past 400 years; so don't think it'll be easy.

jobu• 12 years ago

It was my impression that the torture debate was settled after World War II: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

Torture is wrong, bad, illegal, and ineffective. In a modern world it shouldn't be supported, even from an "Old Testament" sort of good guy.

Chinjut• 12 years ago

I'm perfectly happy claiming lots of things which have been hotly debated in (politico-)-philosophical circles for a long time. And so, I imagine, are most people, including (politico)-philosophers themselves. That everyone doesn't agree with me on everything doesn't lose me sleep.

dhaivatpandya• 12 years ago

Why is this post being downvoted so much? Although I don't agree w/ the author's position, torture and its effectiveness are still debated.

sounds• 12 years ago

tl;dr Ron Conway posted these tweets:

https://twitter.com/RonConway/status/542383330193190913

https://twitter.com/RonConway/status/542404171865927681

Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon, are boring.

Ron Conway's tweets about the CIA are not really interesting.

Ron Conway's actions to deliver funding, connect people, and general effect on the Silicon Valley startup atmosphere are very, very interesting.

Obligatory disclaimer: I strongly support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and am shocked! Shocked I say! -- that Obama has not yet closed Guantanamo Bay after this many years in office.

geebee• 12 years ago

your tl;dr leaves this out

"Interestingly, it was just several weeks ago that Feinstein was the one expressing her distaste for one of Conway’s projects. He’s a big backer of AirBnB, and Feinstein penned an opinion piece in The Chronicle urging Lee to veto the Board of Supervisors’ legislation allowing short-term rentals in private homes. Lee sided with Conway and AirBnB."

graycat5• 12 years ago

"Here are your winnings, Sir."

simon_2• 12 years ago

It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith. You may disagree with it, but "torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people.

lazyjones• 12 years ago

"torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people.

... for a rather arbitrary definition of "evil" (and "good"), one I don't share. Doesn't it make you think a little when every depiction and description of hell contains various forms of torture?

thanksgiving3• 12 years ago

It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith.

Imagine someone who just straight up punches people in the face without any warning for using the n word. Can that ever be in good faith? At what point is it OK to physically hurt others?

letstryagain• 12 years ago

That's debatable. Remember the Geneva Convention?

snowwrestler2• 12 years ago

Good faith and good intentions are not enough to create good in the world.

dreamfactory27• 12 years ago

Oh yes it is

guelo3• 12 years ago

I think the only way it is possible to hold it "in good faith" is to be unconsciously bigoted. That is, you don't realize you're a bigot, probably because you haven't examined your underlying beliefs.

To see this most clearly, try to imagine a situation where you would find it acceptable for an American soldier to be tortured by some foreign power.

justin666• 12 years ago

"torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people

I took air to mean that support of torture eliminates a person from the top strata of the category of "good person" - by itself a handwavy categorization - that should be held up as some kind of exemplar of virtue, as pg has done.

It's a point I happen to agree with, and regardless of whether or not you think Dante would create a special place in hell for rich guys who provide political cover for torturers, it does undermine to some extent the premise of of pg's article.

Writing an article like this about someone you actually like is dangerous. As Pappy Boyington said, "Show me a hero and I'll show you a bum."

NhanH2• 12 years ago

"Good", "evil" and "good faith" are all too ill-defined to be used in a philosophical discussion like this: you will have to define them. It's fine for pg to used, because a) He's almost using good as the opposite of mean, and b) He's not discussing about morality. When it comes to morality discussion, a lot more bets are off and you have to be careful on what basis you're defining "good", "evil" and the like.

To be more on point, there are a lot of "evil" people that are acting on good faith - the comical image of an evil genius who's hell bent on taking over the world for his own greediness or for fun doesn't really exist in real life. You can truly believe that the best way to win a war for your country (and help your fellow country men) is to exterminate the other country, so you make an order to massacre everything that move. That would be evil acting in good faith.

jbapple• 12 years ago

Perhaps he could have the opinion that, as he tweeted, "the CIA saved American lives" in good faith. But he was criticizing a 525-page Senate report on the same day it came out, December 9th. This report has a lot of details on CIA misrepresentations on how they "saved lives". I doubt he read the report before he tweeted.

I don't think that's in good faith.

It is in good company, as Dick Cheney admitted he hadn't read the report, while still asserting it was "full of crap".

Let me give a single example of the kind of CIA claims about the effectiveness of torture that the report documents. On page 188, the report describes a briefing George Tenet and a CIA lawyer gave to some White House officials. (See footnote 1101 for a partial list of attendees.) Their slides included the claim that their torture techniques helped identify Richard Reid.

Richard Reid was arrested before the CIA tortured anyone under this program. This program could not have helped catch Reid unless it also involved the use of a time machine.

You may think this is a silly example, but the report documents dozens of instances of this level of misrepresentation. Footnote 1393 demonstrates another causality inversion that the CIA thinks they caused, in which they tortured someone in 2003 to get enough information to disrupt a plot in 2002.

Check it out for yourself; you can read the Senate report's 525-page executive summary here:

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

and the CIA's response here:

https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/CIAs_June2013_Response_t...

Maybe I'm wrong about torture, and maybe I'm misreading or misunderstanding the report. But I think Conway's dismissal of the report without reading it is in bad faith.

olavk4• 12 years ago

Except he doesn't say "torture is sometimes permissible". He supports the specific actions of CIA where torture were used, but didn't lead to reliable intelligence of value. So it was not a "ticking time-bomb scenario", it was "torture because we have the power to do it".

SideburnsOfDoom• 12 years ago

It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith.

No it is not. Certain things are just incompatible. "good person" and "supporter of torture" are a good example of this.

The illusory "effectiveness" of torture doesn't matter, you may as well ask if slavery is profitable, as others have pointed out. If you're asking that then you have already lost your way.

If this upsets you, then that's on you.

mrxd• 12 years ago

In fairness, he'd probably be really nice to any torture victims if they ever pitched their startup to him.

myhf• 12 years ago

And if he didn't invest in their startup and made sure no one else invested either, he'd probably be really nice about showing them the door.

Udo3• 12 years ago

A good person can still be "wrong" (for any given definition of it). Feinstein is wrong about AirBnB, and Conway is wrong about torture. I was a big fan of Christopher Hitchens' yet I think on balance he was wrong about the Iraq war.

For me, the main objection to torture is not that it often yields unreliable intel, or that innocents end up getting tortured to death, or that it produces more terrorists - all of which are true. I recognize torture sometimes saves lives, and I'm not unsympathetic to the emotion that it carries a somewhat satisfying vengeance component against an enemy who, in their own words, values death more than we value life. Yet my objection is about what effect torture has on us as a society. It's a plague on our house.

Devthrowaway803• 12 years ago

You don't object to innocent people being tortured to death?

If there was no societal impact, would those objections be enough for you to oppose torture?

"My main objection to driving drunk is not the whole 'running over pedestrians' thing, which does happen, but more the effect that it has on my paint job - I come home with all sorts of scuff marks."

olavk4• 12 years ago

So "good person" just means "one of us" and has nothing to do with ethics.

aptwebapps• 12 years ago

I am totally opposed to torture but I have no problem believing someone is "good" even if they think the CIA's actions were correct. Similarly, I try not to fall into the trap of thinking that people who disagree with me are either lying or stupid.

logn2• 12 years ago

He said the CIA saved lives and that Feinstein should listen to her experience vs political staff. That's not a defense of torture. Even assuming you're opposed to any torture in all cases, you can still criticize the torture report and defend organizations involved.

Anyhow, I'd like to think that our goodness as people is not necessarily determined by our political tweets.

olavk4• 12 years ago

There is a lot of discussion in this thread if torture theoretically could be morally justified - ticking time bomb scenarios and so on. But his support is not for some theoretical scenario. It is for the actual CIA actions where people were tortured, where it didn't result in reliable intelligence, and where the CIA lied about the effectiveness of the torture.

Of course, even if the torture didn't lead to intelligence of any value, it still might have been effective. The purpose of torture when used around the world is not primarily to produce intelligence. The primary purpose is to punish, to instill fear into the enemy, and to provide satisfaction. You can still support torture even if you know it does't provided intelligence of value, if you believe the other purposes justifies it.

Bu can you really be called a "good person" if you support torture for the sake of the fear and the pain and the satisfaction? I guess you can - if you are rich and influential enough.

thaumaturgy3• 12 years ago

If you look closely enough at anyone, you will find something to dislike about them. Funny thing about people. Funnier thing: if you look closely enough at anyone you dislike, you can find something to like about them.

People are probably mostly the product of their environment and I doubt anyone here knows Ron Conway well enough to discuss his position on torture. Let his actions speak for him; you can be opposed to torture under pretty much any circumstances, as I am, and still regard someone with a different point of view as basically good.

I really wish your comment didn't get so much of the attention in this thread, it's a bit of a distraction from what should've been the main point of the article.

Semiapies3• 12 years ago

Yes, it does rather take away from endlessly extolling the virtues of the man.

wmeredith• 12 years ago

Everyone responding to this comment is arguing as if "good" and "bad" are provable facts. It's an opinion. You can't disprove it.

personlurking• 12 years ago

If you can't tell who to be nice to, you have to be nice to everyone.

This (more or less) works the opposite way, too. Taking an example I know about, in Brazil, you can't often tell who is going to try to take advantage of you (in business) but enough people have tried in your past that you come to the conclusion that everyone will at least try in the future, and therefore you act accordingly.

It's really frustrating to have to treat people with your guard up when signing a contract or talking through specifics during a deal, but you learn to recognize advantage-takers and even to pretend you are one, too. In doing so, the other person will recognize they can't pull the wool over your eyes either, which puts you both on a 'level' playing field.

This isn't just something I've experienced but also something I've been told by many others in Brazil. There's even a 'law' about it, called Gérson's Law [1], which essentially states "if there's an opportunity to take advantage, go for it".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rson%27s_law

wellboy• 12 years ago

I think, even though it's a bit sad, the assumption that mean people won't be successful, is incorrect.

For the assumption that success is correlated with how kind someone is, there are just too many examples of previous and current startups/CEOs that are/were hugely successful. Actually, my impression is that there are very few of those, who I'd consider genuinely good people that I would really trust.

The thing is, you can be a really good person or you can be an a-hole, you will enter an industry or create a startup that will fit your personality and then it just comes down to IQ and persistence of how successful you will become. This way, a bad/nasty person can create a startup or make money just as much as a really kind person can. In other words, you can create a huge startup either way, the valuations would be the same, irrespective if you are a good person or not.

However, the startups would also be completely different in nature. The nasty startup would be always fighting, receive bad press and its employees would be led by fear. The good startup would be awesome, change an entire industry for the good and its employees don't work for the money, but because they are inspired by its mission and by its CEO.

Both startups would be huge and probably end up having the same valuation, just that their nature is different.

For that reason, as a founder you need to ask yourself what kind of founder you want to be. You can be nasty or you can be kind and awesome. It "doesn't matter" what side you choose, you will be equally successful either way.

However, you need to understand the implications and if you want to be a person that makes people worries or the person that inspires people and creates good in the world.

You can be good or bad, you'll still be successful, however, after you have built the startup, 10 years after you have sold it even, it's the way of how you did it that counts.

nickhuh• 12 years ago

Interesting thoughts. The basic idea, it seems, is that people help out those who they like, and people generally like good people. So, it would seem that the amount a person benefits from being a good person is directly related to how much they depend upon relationships with other people. In the VC world, which is massively relationship driven at the moment, I could see how being a likable person would be extremely beneficial. But perhaps, then, the Ronco principle isn't that good people succeed, but that likable people succeed.

allanjenn• 12 years ago

Is being nice a choice? I don't think so, it should be the default. But if I need money for my startup I would definitely go with the nicest investor.

guelo3• 12 years ago

This article is dumb because it doesn't explain why Ron Conway is so good. Maybe this is written for a silicon valley insider audience that knows what he does that is so great. It feels like pg's writing was more interesting when he was the outsider taking on the status quo.

vidarh• 12 years ago

Part of it is that he has his fingers in every pie, and a contact list that contains pretty much "everyone" that matters in tech in SV, and he's not shy about using it to help connect people to make things happen.

Part of it is that he is very good at coming across as likeable, and charming. I would hope that is representative of how he is, but I've only met him once, briefly (as he had a tiny amount invested in a company I was involved with) so for me I'm going by first impressions and reputation.

Basically he's done favours for a massive amount of people in SV (by pulling strings and connecting people, and making a massive amount of small-ish investments) and been nice and charming enough that most of those people, and many more who know him by reputation, would drop whatever they're doing pretty much instantly if he called to ask for a favour partly because he comes across as a nice, likeable guy that you'd like to help out, and partly because they know by reputation that he's likely to return the favour if/when you need it, and the odds are it will be well worthwhile for you.

dolzenko• 12 years ago

A bit surprised article with so little "content" gets so many upvotes.

JTon• 12 years ago

TLDR:

The Ronco Principle: In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you can't seem good without being good.

graycat5• 12 years ago

In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you can't seem good without being good.

Sometimes might be surprised on this point!

Some people in some relatively small, conservative, apparently highly ethical, responsible, competent, serious, and hard working communities manage totally to pull the wool over the eyes of just about everyone else, including the members of their own families. They can look totally like a sweet, angelic church lady while, actually, plotting against others and slowly but effectively sabotaging them.

How? One way is to be a very talented, determined, bright, mentally energetic actor/actress. The act can take a lot of mental energy to negotiate all the daily events and situations while keeping the act totally believable while actually it is totally false.

There's more on such things in the now famous E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Sorry, PG, there's a fundamental problem here: As in some recent research (wish I'd kept the reference), already in the crib, the girls are thinking about people and the boys, things. While the boy is trying to hack the latch on the crib and install Linux in the toy firetruck on the floor, the girl is trying to elicit protection and care taking from adults, especially her father.

"If a girl is smart, she doesn't have to have brains." and can get others, especially Daddy, to do things for her. A boy might work and work and work, say, to get his iPhone synchronized with his MacBook while his sister can get it done with just one frown and one tear, and often don't need the tear.

A girl can be really good at it, by age four have Daddy totally wrapped around her little finger and manipulated so that he can never tell her no. And, in later years, she can get much better, much, much better at it.

They can be highly talented and very mentally energetic and seem to be sweet, darling, adorable, precious angels while they are actually determined, selfish, even dangerous, masterly manipulators.

Never ask a nerd male to evaluate the real, inner thoughts or intentions of a masterly female -- he just doesn't have the basic qualifications for the job!

You just learned this lesson here for $0 tuition. I paid full tuition, and you don't want to do that; trust me this time! Uh, there are no college loans nearly big enough to cover the tuition I paid.

For Ron Conway, I can't forget his short advice to entrepreneurs in the Sam Altman course at Stanford last fall -- "bootstrap". Okay, message received loud and clear!

I do believe that PG can evaluate Ronco; good to know I can take Ronco's advice seriously!

darkmighty2• 12 years ago

I agree about the general position that girls are more socially focused, but you put a sad and cynical twist to it...

graycat5• 12 years ago

Not all girls are as "sad and cynical" as I described.

But the statement I was responding to was

In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you can't seem good without being good.

So, this statement seems to claim to apply broadly. So, I just said essentially that the statement claims too much, that, for some counterexamples, there are people with behavior that contradicts the claim, e.g., some females, say, adults, using some of what they learned as children, starting even in the crib.

I didn't claim, and don't believe, that the behavior I described, say, that you are describing, appropriately, as "sad and cynical", is common among either males or females. But to counter PG's quite broad claim, I just need some, say, counterexamples; I've seen too many of them.

More generally, from some of what I saw. in a very "connected world", some of the complexity of Presentation of Self in Everyday Life can be just astoundingly involved and complicated -- some very bright, determined people work really hard at such presentation.

I would add, a very "connected world" can lead to more complexity, posturing, manipulation, difference between reality and presentation, etc. than a less connected world. E.g., a person from such a more connected world can feel much better, and act much more like themselves, posture, pretend, and manipulate less, in a big city where they have some anonymity. Presentation in a "connected world" can be one heck of a lot of hard mental work!

thanksgiving3• 12 years ago

I am amazed it is OK to say "the CIA saved American lives" as opposed to "the CIA saved lives". Are American lives worth more than non-US citizens' lives? Would it be permissible for 9/11 to happen if the only people who died were undocumented immigrants? What a shitty person and what a shitty attitude! I guess Paul Graham is a shitty person if he associates with shitty people like Ronco.

bfe• 12 years ago

More generalized, compassion and integrity seem to be in a positive feedback loop with drivers of technological and economic growth.

ecommercematt• 12 years ago

"I'm not saying that if you sort investors by benevolence you've also sorted them by returns, but rather that if you do a scatterplot with benevolence on the x axis and returns on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend." PG/YC, have you tested this hypothesis? Precision would be difficult, but a back of the envelope attempt could be interesting and perhaps reveal unexpected correlations.

nocman• 12 years ago

Silly me, I thought this essay was going to be about Ron Popeil (http://www.ronco.com).

Cue the obligatory Weird Al reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BX56syrmWQ

"It slices.."

"It dices..."

"LOOK AT THAT TOMATO!"

"You could even cut a tin can with it, but you wouldn't want to!"

Ah, good childhood memories.

For those who might care but don't know, Lisa Popeil (Ron's half sister) sang backup vocals on that song. Pretty funny.

With apologies to anyone too young to know about Ronco TV commercials ("Now how much would you pay????")

:-D

dinkumthinkum6• 12 years ago

Me too, I was expecting some kind of Malcolm Gladwell style realization based on some quirky thing Ron Popeil did in his infomercials!

jahmed• 12 years ago

But wait, there's more!

MarkMc• 12 years ago

The world of business has a reputation for being full of assholes, yet perhaps the most successful businessman of all is Warren Buffett, who seems like a genuinely nice guy. It seems that acting with honesty and integrity pays excellent returns in the long run.

fubarred• 12 years ago

A book about the related, long-term trend of decrease violence explained with different angels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...

(Religious extremists, totalitarian regimes notwithstanding.)

zeeshanm• 12 years ago

I think working hard also helps with luck. Here's a story. This goes back to the first ever tc discrpt Hackathon. I was a 19-year-old college student then. I used to go to this NYC resister hackerspace in brooklyn.

So we are doing our hack - a bunch of nyc resistor dudes - it's about 10pm. Here comes Ron Conway with Michael Arrington - checking out the hacks. They come to our desk. See the scrapy robot with wires coming out of it. And here Ron hands over a couple of business cards to our fellow hackers.

I was a total noob back then. I was just like these two guys are checking some stuff out. Without knowing who they were.

While other investors would be out enjoying their weekend, Ron was out on a Saturday night meeting hackers. Even after so many big wins he was out in the trenches to source the next big thing.

clark800• 12 years ago

I must say, Paul Graham is a really good writer. His posts are very eloquent and convey interesting ideas without extraneous fluff. Too often people credit famous individuals with talents they don't actually deserve, but in this case the quality stands independent of the fame.

datashovel• 12 years ago

I see transparency in markets and governments as a "movement" in the making. My hunch is the next 10-20 years will be very interesting in this regard.

The Ronco Principle

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